


Drop to Hold You

by QuickedWeen



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Auror Louis, Auror Training, But in post-grad study, Care of Magical Creatures, Confused boys, Fluff, Graduate School, Harry loves, Ilvermorny, Lust at First Sight, M/M, Oxford, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 18:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18349388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickedWeen/pseuds/QuickedWeen
Summary: After the end of the Second Wizarding War and the ensuing diplomacy between Muggles and the Wizarding world, the long-defunct Merlin College at Oxford opened it's doors again.The ultra-competitive programs at Merlin require a rigorous application process. None more than the Auror training program. Louis finally manages to get in with his best friend Liam after a few false starts, only to be faced with the most beautiful,distractingman he could ever imagine.





	Drop to Hold You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alivingfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alivingfire/gifts).



> Hello! I really loved this prompt, it was such a neat idea.
> 
> Prepare for some fluff. And stupid boys. And a complete and total disregard for any sort of graduate school structure.
> 
> I did do some research into the college system at Oxford and how it worked so that kind of helped? 
> 
> Anyway - enjoy!

Oxford University wasn’t much different than Hogwarts when Harry really sat back and thought about it. The architecture was similar, students were in groups like houses only now it was colleges, and Niall was his next door neighbor. Well, downstairs neighbor.

Harry aimed his wand at his beat up school trunk and lifted it up on to his bed. His room was plain and simple with dark wooden shelves and walls painted a neutral medium gray that had a blue tint in the natural light of the morning. There were plenty of shelves and closet space, so Harry began to unpack his clothes immediately. It would help, he thought to himself, and make him feel more at home.

Merlin College at Oxford was the most prestigious post-graduate program in the world for witches and wizards. No pressure. Harry gulped as he smoothed the pile of sweaters out on the shelf and ran his hand over their comfortingly soft fabric.

When he was done with all of his folded clothes, he began on his hanging clothes. In a noticeable contrast to his time at Hogwarts, he only had one set of formal robes with him. They were new, purchased over the summer at the tailor in Diagon Alley next to where he worked in the bakery.

Harry stared down at the rest of his clothes. He hadn’t ever worn clothes like this before. Sure, he had worn casual clothes when he wasn’t at school, and in the years since he had left, but they were all fairly basic because that was what all his friends were wearing and what he needed to wear for work.

During the summer, his muggle-born best friend Niall convinced Harry to go with him to pick out new clothes for school as he didn’t really have a big enough muggle wardrobe anymore.

Because that was the major difference about Oxford. It was a muggle school.

Rather, it started out as a muggle school, but after the Second Wizarding War that had ended twenty years prior, the Minister of Magic decided to help Oxford resurrect Merlin College. There was still a shroud of mystery for those muggles that didn’t want to look closely, but it was vastly more prominent than before.

Merlin College had existed in some form since the University’s infancy, but went to ground at the onset of the Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century. There had been talks of reinstating it over the years, but something always held the University back.

Its history was part of its prestige, Harry supposed. Either way, there were areas of study for a variety of programs that students were allowed to apply for after they had been out of school for at least five years.

Harry’s specialty was the History of the Care of Magical Creatures.

His was one of the more studious research degrees, but there were plenty of other practical degrees as well. The most famous of which was the Auror program. The five year rule was almost entirely because of the Aurors. There were so many practical requirements intended to make sure the applications that they were receiving were the best of the best. On top of that, because of the danger involved in being an Auror, applicants had to be at least twenty-one years of age.

Because all of the Merlin College residents would be living and working together, the school had decided to raise the age and practical requirements for all of their college’s particular areas of study.

If Harry thought too much about the students in the Auror program, he would get intimidated all over again. He shook his head and reached for the hangers he had packed on the other side of his trunk.

One by one Harry pulled out the clothes he had bought on his muggle shopping adventure with Niall. They had gone to the shops for Niall, but his best friend had brought him to a muggle clothing store the likes of which Harry had never seen, and completely opened up his eyes.

In the shop there were so many soft, silky fabrics with bright colors and patterns that Harry had only ever seen in the muggle movies Niall had forced him to watch.

He could only stand there so long running his hands over the silk and admiring the colors before Niall knowingly grabbed a few and forced him into a dressing room.

When the first brush of silk caressed his skin, Harry went mad. The shirts felt like he was wearing a cloud they were so light and airy. He had bought more than a few, and after that he bought some new pants to go with them, and soon he had spent all the money he had been saving for the summer.

Thankfully, it had been early enough in the season that he could save more, but still.

He hadn’t worked up the nerve to wear his new clothes to work for fear of ruining them, and a little part of them had wanted to keep them new and pristine for the start of the semester.

There was nothing better than staring down the possibility of a brand new start.

It wasn’t entirely a new start, though. Quite a few of their classmates from Hogwarts were eligible to apply at the same time Harry and Niall were, so he was sure there would be some familiar faces. The college wasn’t particularly large, but there were enough students to fill out the courses of study so he was bound to run into some old friends.

Not everyone applied the second they became eligible as well. By definition of the age requirement, he and Niall would probably be amongst the youngest in their college.

When he was done admiring his new clothes where they were hanging in his closet, Harry flopped back on his bed, ignoring the rest of his belongings where they laid in wait on the other side of the room.

His door was slightly ajar so that his mum and sister could come in when they arrived, but Niall ended up being the first to take advantage of it.

“Harry?” Niall called. Harry’s room was sort of “L” shaped, so Niall was blocked from his view.

“In here,” he replied as his best friend’s footsteps got farther into the room.

Niall looked at his closet and scoffed. “I can’t believe you’ve already put your clothes away,” he replied, but Harry knew it was all a front. Niall was one of the biggest neat freaks Harry knew. If he had to guess, he would say Niall started unpacking his guitars and books first instead.

Lacking any proper response, Harry just grunted from his place on the bare mattress. The scratchy texture of the surface was uncomfortable, so he didn’t last long. Deciding that his sheets were a good next step, he went straight for the box with his linens in them.

“A few other people from Hogwarts are going to the college bar tonight, do you want to come?” Niall asked as he absentmindedly flipped through Harry’s new shirts.

Harry groaned. Socializing already. He hadn’t prepared enough. These were potentially old classmates that knew him when he was much spottier and way more awkward. How embarrassing.

“Wait,” he said as a thought dawned on him. “How did you find out about this?”

Niall shrugged. “I don’t know, it just got passed around.”

Harry shook his head. This was how it had been at Hogwarts too. Somehow, Niall always had his finger on the pulse of all the goings-on. The concept of a college bar was new to Harry. At Hogwarts they all ate meals together, and that was a given here as well, but there was also a bar. It was a proper bar with food and bartenders and everything.

“Are you coming, then?” Niall asked as he continued to mess with Harry’s stuff.

“Yeah, sure.” He might as well get the reintroduction hurdle over with now, because no matter what, it was going to be awkward.

Harry was already gravitating towards his closet when Niall piped up.

“You should wear one of your new shirts,” he said with an overly casual tone.

It was barely midday and the meetup wasn’t until the evening, so Harry had plenty of time to psych himself up. In the meantime, his sister and his mum should get there soon and they were going to help him settle into his room and decorate a little bit.

No matter when it happened, Harry was always going to be a little nervous about stepping out of his comfort zone.

There was no time like the present.

* * *

Louis tossed a blanket on his bed before he shoved the contents of his upturned trunk onto the floor. He would deal with it later.

Hopping up onto the mattress, he winced as the bed frame groaned a bit. He would have to be careful about jumping then. Noted.

He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and checked his texts. There were only a few in his group chat with his siblings that didn’t involve him in any way so he switched it off and decided to shower and freshen up before meeting Liam at the bar.

There was a communal bathroom on the fifth floor, so he didn’t undress completely, but he did toss his shirt somewhere to the right of the pile he had pushed onto the floor earlier. As he left his room and turned the corner to the bathroom, he caught a glimpse of long legs in black jeans and a bright pink polka dot shirt. The person’s brown curls cut off where they brushed the top of their collar, but that was all he saw as the stairwell door closed and locked behind them.

Instinctively, he pulled his towel up to cover his bare chest, but the person was already gone.

Shit. He thought this floor was all blokes so he hadn’t worried about his semi-naked trip to the bathroom. Louis paused. He had somehow already forgotten that it was only move-in day. There were probably mothers and sisters and girlfriends roaming around, which he should have thought about first before he just wandered around undressed.

No harm, no foul, he supposed. Whoever it was had already left and probably wouldn’t be coming back right away, so he continued on his journey to the showers.

When he was done, he felt a million times better. Back in his room, he toweled off and rummaged through his clean clothes. It was still nice and warm outside, so he grabbed a t-shirt and some loose light jeans. He checked his fringe in the mirror one last time before locking his room behind him and heading down the hall to Liam’s room.

Louis knocked hard on the door. “Leeeyum.”

There was a faint, muffled “Oh, shit,” a scramble, and a thud. Louis rolled his eyes.

When Liam finally opened the door, he only left a gap of a few inches and was visibly winded.

“Zayn still here?” Louis asked sardonically not even bothering to try and see around his friend.

Liam shot a quick glance behind him before opening the door fully. “Yeah, he can stay tonight, actually.”

“Hey, Zayn,” Louis waved to Liam’s boyfriend who was trying to affect his normal cool and collected air. The image was somewhat marred by his t-shirt being on both backwards and inside out.

“Lou,” he replied as Louis stepped farther into the room for the first time.

Louis raised his eyebrows at both of them before reaching out to tug on the tag of Zayn’s shirt. “Ready to go downstairs, boys?”

They both had the decency to look sheepish, and agreed quickly that they were indeed ready to go.

Louis didn’t hate being their third wheel. Not really. He understood that it was difficult to have a long distance relationship. Zayn had a steady job with a media and marketing design firm in Edinburgh that he couldn’t leave, and Liam would be here in Oxford for the foreseeable future. He commended them for making it work as well as they had so far.

Louis and Liam were at Merlin College for one reason, and one reason only. The Auror program.

The application process was grueling, filled with testing across all disciplines. Charms, Defense, History, not to mention the physical fitness tests.

It had taken Louis three tries to get accepted—two failed, one successful—and he was one of the lucky ones.

“Ready, Lou,” Liam said as he and Zayn finished making themselves presentable and they all headed out into the hallway.

Louis rounded the corner where they doubled back past his room and he glanced at the building map posted on the stairwell door one last time to make sure they were headed in the right direction.

When the school revived Merlin College, with it came the college bar. The building had been used as a pub for the past couple of centuries until the revival. When they spruced up the living quarters those became a bit more modern, but when the boys entered the bar, Louis could definitely tell that the structure had been around since well before the rest of the building's time.

The bar was everything an old wizarding pub should be and reminded Louis of the time he and his mum had gone on holiday and stopped in Hogsmeade to explore and bring his younger siblings who had never been before.

The littlest ones had gone mad for everything in that Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes shop which had driven Louis to the brink. He had to be on the lookout for a full week before they calmed down, but he was equal parts crazed and proud. Of course, then they all went back to school and all they wrote about was how impressed their friends were that they brought back things from Hogsmeade.

Louis sometimes wished he could have been there at Ilvermorny with his other siblings, but he was too many years older than them. Lottie was only six years younger so they had overlapped for a year but that was all.

In general—as a big brother—he grappled with the idea that he couldn’t protect his younger siblings round the clock. On top of his fundamental instincts, he was training to be an Auror, so he truly saw the worst of the wizarding world. Having lived in both places, Louis couldn’t decide if they were worse off in America or in England; but there were definitely two different breeds of practitioners of dark magic.

Louis’ mum, the muggle-born Johannah or Jay, had moved his whole family to America when he was ten to follow her fiancee and Louis’ eventual step-father, Mark Tomlinson. Mark had family in New England and he had managed to land some corporate job that Louis still didn’t understand however many years later. Jay was a nurse and could always find work, especially at all of the hospitals in Boston.

Then, a few months after they arrived, Louis got his letter.

He and his mum had been confused and elated; she had squeezed him tight, and through her tears told him she always knew he was special. Louis’ most prominent memory from that day, the day he learned he was a wizard, was rolling his eyes at her embarrassing mum-antics.

To say Mark had been surprised was an understatement. He never really did come to grips with the idea of Louis’ magic, if Louis thought back on it.

Louis’ discovery that he was a wizard was the final wedge in an already splintering relationship.

Jay and Mark split up, and she and Louis considered moving back home to England, but Jay loved her job and she was worried about Louis’ safety after reading about the First and Second Wizarding wars that both seemed to center around the school. After Louis learned about them in his History of Magic courses at his own school, he was quite glad to be there at Ilvermorny instead of back in England. She had also taken one look at the costs associated with Hogwarts—not to mention the cost of moving back—and suddenly Louis was headed off to the Berkshires.

After Louis had already started school and she had officially split with Mark, Jay met a nice doctor named Dan. A few years later, Lottie got her letter, and the rest was history.

Louis sighed as he shook off the old memories and pulled a high bar stool out from under the table he had scouted for the three of them.

He could really use a pint.

They all settled at the table and Louis offered to get the first round. He approached the dark wooden bar and leaned his elbows on the surface that had the nice, questionable stickiness one desired in an old fashioned pub.

The bartender was soundly ignoring Louis after his approach and subsequent awkward finger drumming to pass the time. The man was instead concentrating very hard on talking to— _ogling_ —someone farther down that Louis couldn’t see.

Because this was the college bar, Louis didn’t want to start his post-graduate experience off on the wrong foot with someone as vital as the resident barkeep, but by then it had been at least five minutes and the bloke had yet to even acknowledge Louis’ existence.

“Oi! Mate!” Louis called after another two and a half minutes passed and he couldn’t take it anymore. He may have grown up in America, but his Yorkshire accent hadn’t softened a bit thanks to the summers he spent with his grandparents.

The bartender shot him a withering glance and turned back to smile apologetically at whoever he was talking to before politely excusing himself. Louis scoffed and glanced at Liam and Zayn for some back up.

They… didn’t care. They were too busy mooning at each other to pay attention to what Louis was doing. They could be at the bar _on_ the moon for all they knew.

Finally, the bartender approached him and took his order.

“Three pints. Cheers,” Louis said even as he was already turning his back to Louis and the rest of the bar.

Yeah, he was definitely going to hex Louis’ drink, even though Louis was pretty sure it was against the rules to use magic in the dormitory building.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s been trying to get into that guys pants for years,” a husky voice said from somewhere over Louis’ shoulder. When he turned to follow the noise, there was a petite blonde girl with a strong, angled bob that frame her face. She had beautiful, more exotic features that Louis couldn’t quite place. Eastern European, if he had to guess.

“Oh yeah?” he prompted, craning his neck to try and get a glimpse of the object of the bartender’s affection.

“Yeah, since we all went to school together,” she added. She approached the bar and lined her body up next to Louis’. “Which you definitely did not do.”

Louis put his hand to his chest. “Do what? Go to school with you?” he asked, reeling a bit from the subject change.

“Yeah. Would have remembered you.” She paused and eyed Louis thoughtfully. “I’m Bebe,” she added sticking out her hand with her long, manicured fingernails.

Louis liked her immediately. “Louis. Louis Tomlinson.” He shook her hand and admired her good, strong grip.

“Pleasure,” she replied with a smirk. “Now. A whole bunch of us went to Hogwarts.” She pointed to a group of people huddled in one corner of the bar talking and laughing raucously.

“Where did you go?”

“Ilvermorny,” Louis said definitively. Bebe let out a little “Ah,” under her breath as she nodded in recognition. “My mate Liam here—” Louis pointed to Liam, but it was useless given the amorphous blob of body parts he and Zayn made up at the moment. “Went to Durmstrang.”

Louis had met Liam after he left school five years prior. Louis’ mum and Dan had already been seriously thinking about moving the family back to the United Kingdom before Louis’ final year so that Lottie might start at Hogwarts instead. When it came down to it, it made the most sense for them to stay for Louis’ last year and for Lottie to go to Ilvermorny with him.

A year later, when he finished his final year of school, Louis knew he wanted to enter an Auror training program which meant he had started trying to strategize how he could get into the _best_ Auror training program. They all sat down as a family and decided he would move back to England on his own and establish residency which would give him a boost on his applications when he could start applying.

Louis had been somewhat casually looking for a flatmate in the Daily Prophet classifieds, but had ended up meeting Liam at his local muggle gym instead. Louis didn’t love the gym—he preferred to get his exercise in with footie games and cardio like that, but that wasn’t always possible in winter time.

When he was trying out gyms, he had seen Liam at one, and could tell he was a wizard as his wand was sticking out of the outside pocket of his gym bag in the locker room. On the gym floor, he had seen some of the cross training exercises Liam was doing and liked the look of them, so he struck up a conversation and asked him about it.

They got to talking about life and had clicked almost immediately. Sure, Liam was uptight sometimes—Louis chalked that up to the regimented way of life at Durmstrang—but meeting Zayn a year later really mellowed him out.

“A few of my cousins went there. Tough place. You here for the Auror program?” Bebe asked, snapping Louis back to reality.

“Oh, um, yeah. That’s us,” he nodded.

“Cool,” she smiled brightly at him as his pints arrived, and there was a small cocktail glass for her with a brightly colored liquid inside.  Louis didn’t even remember hearing her order it. “Well, see you around, Louis.”

“Yeah, see you around,” he called after her. Pints in hand, he made his way back to their table.

They nursed their first round mostly discussing what Zayn had on the horizon in Edinburgh because it was the last chance they would get to hang out together as a group for awhile.

Absently, Louis made a note that he should stock up on the ingredients for his potion to ease sore muscles because when Zayn left, Liam was going to get mopey the same way he did every time. When Liam got mopey, he went to the gym. A lot.

The physical fitness requirements were Louis’ least favorite part of Auror training, but as long as he kept moving, kept playing footie, he would be fine. Quidditch in a pinch if no one at Merlin wanted to play football with him. It was certainly exercise, but flying just took the satisfaction out of it for him, he supposed.

By the time they were ready for their next round, Zayn had offered to get it.

“Good luck with that,” Louis scoffed. “Bartender is a twat, too busy drooling over some guy to pour drinks.” Not that he was bitter or anything. He hooked his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the long wooden bar.

Zayn immediately followed his indication and raised his eyebrows before smirking at Louis.

“You mean that bloke he’s talking to now? He’s pretty.”

Pretty? Louis shrugged. “I’m not sure, I didn’t see him before.”

Zayn looked like he was going to hurt himself smirking at Louis the way he was, like he knew something Louis didn’t.

“Alright,” Louis heaved a dramatic sigh and turned to look. The bartender was still talking to someone and it _did_ look like he was attempting to flirt with whoever was on the receiving end.

In the most cliche fashion, bodies shifted and moved out of the way with just the right rhythm that they parted to reveal the bartender’s companion.

At first, the only thing that Louis' brain registered was the pink silk shirt with white polka dots that he had seen earlier in the dormitory hallway. Then, he saw the rest of him.

The man was radiant and his smiled glowed even in the dim light of the bar. His rich brown curls reflected the warm lights beautifully. Louis felt a little sheepish for assuming he was a woman earlier, but he let his eyes trail down to the man’s endlessly long legs encased in the same tight black jeans. Definitely not a woman.

Louis stopped himself for a moment. If the man was on Louis’ floor, and then subsequently in the college bar, it was a reasonable assumption that he was a student of Merlin College as well. As Louis contemplated the strength of his lust, he immediately began to tamp it down. Getting involved with a fellow student in his college could get messy.

Louis shook his head. He was about eight steps ahead of himself. He didn’t even know the man. Plus, the bartender had been putting the moves on the bloke all night, and he looked amenable to his attention and charm. If he was even gay.

Bebe had implied that this was a regular attempt of the bartender’s though, so Louis could make the assumption that the bartender knew something that he didn’t. Like the man’s name for a start.

“Earth to Louis,” Zayn called in a sing-song voice as he waved his hand in front of Louis’ face.

Louis blinked at him. “Alright, mate?” he asked instinctively. Zayn scoffed at his attempt to cover up the way he was blatantly checking the pretty bloke out.

“Yeah, I’m alright, but are you?”

Louis waved dismissively over toward the corner of the bar. “Whatever. Just go get the next round.”

He turned his head to watch Zayn leave. Or at least use Zayn’s movements as cover for another covert glance at the man in the billowy pink shirt.

 

An hour later, Louis was feeling comfortably buzzed playing a game of muggle darts against Liam. He was losing, horribly, and he _hated_ losing. In his defense, the group of friends that included his mystery stranger was only two tables away from their game.

How was Louis supposed to concentrate when the man was just sitting there, perched sideways on a bar stool like that? The silk shirt had short slits up the sides so that the back of the shirt pulled down and away from the front of the shirt. The drape of it revealed a little triangle of skin above his waistband that was being pushed from the pressure of how tight his pants were.

Louis wanted to suck on the skin there.

He was also probably drunk. That was the only possible explanation.

They had been able to overhear the group a bit—the people bunched around the table hadn’t exactly been quiet—and Louis determined that they were a group of students that had all been at Hogwarts together.

Psh. Hogwarts. Half the reason his family had stayed in America was because he hadn’t been able to afford all of the fees associated with the school.

Louis got distracted during his last throw because the man in the pink shirt had giggled at something one of his friends said. Giggled.

Meanwhile, it was Liam’s turn again and he was nowhere to be found.

Nevermind.

Louis found him attached to Zayn’s lips. Again.

“Oi!” Louis yelled. “Liam!”

His harsh tone did nothing to deter his ex-friends from mauling each other.

Louis sighed dramatically, still trying to get their attention.

“We’ll play with you,” a familiar voice called from a few tables away. The voice was Bebe, but she had drawn the attention of almost all of the tables surrounding them as well, including his curly haired stranger.

“Yes!” Louis cried out, emboldened by the beer in his system and the rush of being the center of attention for a brief moment. “Bebe, my darling savior.”

Bebe rolled her eyes as she hopped off the stool, trying and failing to bite back a smile at Louis’ antics.

“Who wants to play?” she asked her table. “Horan? Styles?”

One of those two names must have been his stranger because the man shrugged and stood up.

“I’ll have a go.”

Oh. His voice was deep—deeper than Louis expected—and rich.

“Me and Harry are going to crush you, Beebs,” the last participant added, with a light Irish accent no less, as he stood up and attached himself to Louis’ stranger.

Harry. That was his stranger.

Harry, who under the cover of everyone shifting around to start the game, blatantly eyed Louis up and down. When his eyes traveled back up and he found Louis watching him, he quickly looked away, blushing and biting his lip.

“There’s no way twinkle toes here can beat me,” Bebe replied, pointing in Harry’s general direction. Louis watched the way Harry locked his hands behind his back and let his left leg kind of fall into his right a bit and he stood comfortably pigeon-toed while he bantered back and forth with Bebe.

Louis tried not to think about how suggestive the pose was. Partly because the conversation was moving too quickly around him. They had all known each other for such a long time and he was coming in halfway through the story with absolutely no context.

Sober Louis would have been a lot more wary and careful in how he interacted with them, but _he_ wasn’t available at the moment.

Drunk Louis clapped his hands together to bring some order to the proceedings. “Alright then, love,” he nodded to Bebe. “You and me.”

“Let’s do this!” she cried, leaning into him and throwing her hand around his shoulder to lead him over to the board.

This was going to be great.

 

They lost. Horribly.

The Irish lad, Niall, was alright. But, Harry? His aim was impeccable. Both Niall and Bebe seemed astonished by it, so it must have been out of character for him.

Either way, win or lose, Louis was pretty sure Harry was flirting with him.

Maybe not _flirting,_ flirting, because they hadn’t really spoken to each other at all, but they kept gravitating towards each other nonetheless; “accidentally” getting in each other’s personal space multiple times.

“Hazza, I can’t believe your game,” Niall slapped him on the shoulder.

Harry spun the base of his pint around on the table slowly. “I’ve never played before.”

“Never played?” Louis interjected, watching Harry’s eyes meet his and flash with something he couldn’t quite distinguish.

They stayed like that for a moment. Frozen. Staring at each other.

Niall’s voice finally cut through the tension obliviously. “Why were you never on the house team in school then?”

Harry broke the eye contact with Louis and looked in Niall’s direction fondly. “Because I’m still a shit flyer, Niall. Even if I can aim.”

They had done more thorough introductions earlier between turns, so they all knew Louis had gone to school across the pond.

“More of a footie man, myself,” he said as he lifted his new pint up to take a sip.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Niall shouted with an unexpected exuberance as he slapped Louis on the back, causing him to choke on his beer. Louis’ eyes started to water as he held his coughs in and tried to keep his cool.

“You play?” Louis choked out.

“‘Course I do, I’m muggle-born. Tried to get it to catch on at Hogwarts but everyone just wanted to play Quidditch so I adapted.”

“Want to start up a team? I think there’s a little inter-college league but I don’t think Merlin has ever participated. Bunch of useless wizards.”

Niall threw his head back and cackled. “Sure, just got to get the rest of the team together.”

“Deal,” Louis said excitedly as he shoved his hand in front of Niall and they shook on it. His eyes shot to the side stealthily—he hoped—to where Harry and Bebe were giggling conspiratorially. “Do you—You should take my mobile number.”

Niall’s eyes lit up as he pulled his own mobile out of his pockets. Louis was just thankful to have wizard friends that seemed to use theirs with some regularity. As it was the wizards around them were looking askance at their exchange of numbers.

“What floor are you on?” Niall asked as he nodded his head in the general direction of the dormitories.

“Fifth,” Louis replied after it took him a moment to wrack his beer soaked brain.

Niall reached over and slapped a hand on Harry’s shoulder again. “That’s where Hazza is too. And someone else,” he trailed off as his eyes searched the bar and he tried to recall who it was who had said that to him at some point.

“My mate Liam,” Louis pointed at where Liam and Zayn were still on their own planet.

“Yes! With the hot boyfriend.”

Louis laughed as he picked up his pint to drain it. He didn’t know what round they were on or whose turn it was to get the next. Was it his again already?

His skin prickled as Harry leaned into his space to get off his bar stool. Because Louis was drunk enough, he didn’t realize until afterwards that he had sucked in an audible breath.

Harry had already slid off the stool and began to walk away but his head whipped back to Louis quickly. Their eyes locked again for the millionth time that night, and Harry’s widened briefly before he spun around and went for the bar. The bartender lit up and Louis groaned.

He groaned in frustration at not getting the next round for at least twenty minutes and he groaned at the idea that the most beautiful man in the world lived on his floor in college so he probably shouldn’t pursue anything in case it got messy.

And, he reminded himself, he was here for the most elite Auror training in the world. So he shouldn’t really be looking at fit boys anyway.

Louis let his forehead drop down to the table top in front him and groaned again.

Bebe patted him on the back and rubbed between his shoulder blades soothingly. “I know babes, but you’ll get through it.”

He wasn’t sure he would.

 

* * *

**Two Months Later**

 

Harry was drowning. It was almost the end of their first semester and he was falling apart. He twirled his quill around in his fingers as he stared at the empty roll of parchment in front of him.

It was definitely mocking him.

“It’s not mocking you,” Niall replied.

Harry grumbled over his shoulder towards where his best friend was sprawled out on his bed holding his laptop at an impossible angle. “It is a little”

Niall was in the Communications program at Merlin, and it was his dream to modernize the Daily Prophet. As far as Harry knew, the Prophet had yet to _ask_ to be modernized.

He sighed and glared at the parchment some more. Harry was mature enough to admit that his problem was not this foot of blank parchment in particular. The problem was everything else.

All of his classes, all of this research—he felt like he was banging his head against a wall. History of the Care of Magical Creatures was his favorite subject, it always had been. It combined his love of wizarding history with his absolute and total adoration of magical creatures and he had loved it all through his gap years between Hogwarts and Oxford. All the research he had done on his own time in preparation for applying to the program felt like a stopgap in his brain. Nothing he did could pry it loose. All he could do was trudge through his assignments one by one. He knew his work lately had been mediocre at best.

Niall patted his shoulder, startling Harry out of the trance he had fallen into.

“Come on, Haz. Let’s get something to eat. You’ll feel better.”

Harry rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He wasn’t sure he had a choice. As he pushed back from the desk, he glanced appreciatively at the top of his dresser that Niall had straightened up while he was busy having his existential crisis.

They left the college grounds for the little sandwich shop across the road. After they ordered, Harry perched himself on a bar stool in the window and slumped down against the wall, fitting himself as far into the corner as he could, resting his chin on his hand and admiring the rare sunny and crisp fall day.

His peaceful view across the way looking back towards Merlin was almost immediately interrupted by Liam. He was walking along the path until he saw an open bench and slung his rucksack down on the wooden slats before following it and stretching out his legs in front of him. Leaning back and turning his face up to the sun, he looked positively serene.

Harry smiled to himself and tried to think of a charm he could use to mess with him at this distance.

In the weeks since that first night in the college bar, the various people that had been there that night all became fast friends.

 _Various people._ Harry scoffed at himself. He had a name.

Louis.

It popped into Harry’s head like a lightning bolt just as the man in question came up the path and threw himself violently onto the ancient bench next to Liam, making him jump.

Harry really should have seen that coming. The two of them were best friends in the same program; practically inseparable.

He liked hanging out with Liam, he really did, but Louis was always there, and hanging out with Louis made Harry... well he wasn’t really sure how he felt about Louis. “Uncomfortable” felt too negative, and “turned on” was a little too drastic. Occasionally, their eyes would meet and Harry felt like Louis was going to take him apart right then and there, but then he would blink and Louis would go back to ignoring him.

On top of that, they hadn’t really had that many actual conversations, and any time they tried it was monumentally awkward.

Louis was so hot and cold, and Harry was so confused that it was just easier to ignore him. And subtly avoid him.

But all Harry wanted to do was watch him move.

The whole situation had been easier to deal with at the beginning of the semester because everyone was still sort of in that getting-to-know-a-new-friend stage, but now all of their friends had moved past that and they were still stuck.

Also, at the beginning of the semester Harry was having a lot less existential crises.

There was a clang as Niall placed their sandwich trays down in front of them. This particular cafe was Harry’s favorite because it was run by a sweet french couple. They always had fresh ingredients, everyone was so nice, and they used little metal personal pizza pans as their serving trays. His mood lifted a bit and he smiled down at the table in front of him as he picked up his roast beef sandwich and took a hearty bite. The lettuce crunched and a little bit of mayo squished out from between the two pieces of baguette from the pressure.

Harry felt it at the corner of his lips as he chewed and reached for a napkin. When he looked up to use his blurry reflection in the glass of the window to wipe it away, he froze. He was face to face, separated by a thin piece of glass, with Louis who was staring at him with a dumbfounded expression.

The napkin crinkled in Harry's hand as his grip tightened. Mortified, Harry quickly looked down at the counter again as he lifted the napkin to his lips. The blush had fully bloomed on his face and he just kept chanting to himself _walk away, walk away, walk away._ Maybe if he tried hard enough he could do some wandless magic to will Louis away and then claim he wasn’t breaking school rules because it wasn’t on purpose, it was instinctual!

“Hey Niall,” Liam called from the door of the cafe.

Harry needed an invisibility cloak to appear. Now. In the middle of this muggle cafe.

“Liam! Lou! Didn’t see you mate. Want to join us?” Niall patted the counter next to him. At least Harry was still wedged in the corner.

“There’s a table over here,” Liam nodded over his shoulder to a much more intimate booth off the side.

Niall grabbed Harry’s sandwich tray right out from under his nose. “Hey!” he pouted. Did he not get a vote at all?

Carrying both of their trays, Niall turned and raised his eyebrows at Harry, waiting for him to get up and climb into the booth as Louis and Liam went up to the counter to order. Harry slid off his stool and did just that. He was grateful when Niall climbed into the same side of the table with him so he wouldn’t be forced to sit with someone else. He liked Liam, sure, but there was always the possibility that it could be Louis.

When they came back with their sandwiches in hand, though, Louis climbed into the booth first and Harry realized he had grossly miscalculated.

Louis settled himself down with his sandwich in front of him, and almost immediately, his legs tangled with Harry’s longer ones, unseen under the wooden table top.

Harry saw the exact moment that Louis realized what had happened. His elbows were out and he had stopped with his sandwich just inches from his lips.

As subtly as possible, Harry tried to concentrate on eating his own sandwich while attempting to move his legs out of the way and still maintain a comfortable position. Unfortunately, Louis moved at the same time, and they just tangled themselves further.

Harry’s cheeks were burning again as he crossed his ankles and dragged his feet back towards the bench out of the way. Louis must have done the same as now only their knees were touching. Harry supposed it was the best option.

Blood pounded in Harry’s ears and he could barely keep track of the conversation. He felt Louis look at him a few times, but he fought the urge to look back.

The thing was, Harry wasn’t shy. He wasn’t a wallflower. That was not something he had ever struggled with before, and he would even go so far as to say he loved being the center of attention sometimes when the situation called for it and he was surrounded by people he trusted.

What made him this way was the confusion he was left with after every interaction he had with Louis.

They all finished their lunch and Harry could finally breathe when Louis and Niall split off to go to football practice while Liam and Harry trudged back to study, griping about the homework they had to finish and what the end of their semesters held in store.

The Auror program was endlessly confusing for Harry, but he did his best to nod and sympathize with what Liam was telling him while they walked.

Now, an hour later, Harry was seated in front of his blank parchment again. He could do this. All he needed to do was get to the end of the semester.

 

“Harry…” his advisor sighed as she took her glasses off and placed them on the desk in front of her. That wasn’t a good sign.

He had turned in his final parchment of the semester and they were having their final meeting to set his schedule for after the holidays.

“Are you sure this is what you want to be doing?” she asked carefully.

Harry cleared his throat. “Well, I’m not sure I really have a choice.” He was at the most prestigious university, studying something he had dedicated himself to a long time ago. The train had left the station, and was well into its journey.

“There’s always a choice.”

Harry’s mind began to whirl with thoughts of failing classes and disappointment and wasted money. “I’m sorry, is there something wrong with my grades this semester? Or my thesis?”

She tucked her hair behind her ear and leaned back in her plush chair. “No, nothing wrong. It’s just a little… unimaginative.”

“Oh.” Disappointment cut the tension in his shoulders and he slumped down, at a loss for what to do.

“I mean, ‘Colonization and it’s Direct Effect on the Evolution of Fire Crabs’ is interesting, but is it really what you want to be studying?”

Harry opened his mouth to assure her that it was. To say that it fascinated him how Fire Crabs had been stolen from their home in the South Pacific only to be bred and exploited throughout the British Empire. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“No,” he whispered before he could think better of it.

“I didn’t think so,” she answered, looking at him with kind but pitying eyes.

“What are my options, then?” he asked as the anxieties from a few minutes ago came back in rolling waves that made his heard pound and his palms sweat.

She opened one of her desk drawers. “Well, you could change your thesis. Or… I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of showing some of your research to another program.”

“Wait, what?”

“Look, Harry. Everything I read in this,” she lay her hand flat on top of the binder with his notes and outlines and everything he had poured his heart into, “was at its most interesting and, well, alive when you were discussing the current treatment of fire crabs, the exploitation of them, and things like the licenses one needs to own them.”

That was buried in the conclusion of his outline. He supposed he did quite enjoy looking into that part, but there wasn’t another program at Oxford where that was remotely relevant.

“I think you should go into Ministry and Public Policy.”

Harry choked on his own breath in surprise. “Seriously?”

She nodded and passed over what looked like an application. “Nothing is guaranteed, but the policy surrounding the care of magical creatures is a pet hobby of the director of the program. She was impressed with your work. It wouldn’t be easy at all. It’s an extremely difficult program of study, and you would be playing catch-up, but I think you should consider it.”

Harry wracked his brain as he tried to pull at the string that would lead him to the name of the director. Finally, it came to him.

“You want me to apply to join _Hermione Granger’s_ program?”

Forget adrenaline spike, Harry was pretty sure he was flat-lining.

“I really wouldn’t think of her—”

Harry cut her off as another thought occurred to him. “You showed Hermione Granger my work?” he cried out as his voice got squeakier.

“Harry, calm down,” his advisor said firmly.

That sobered him up quickly. “Right, sorry.”

“That’s alright. It will do you good to get it out of your system now.”

He nodded and bit his lip to keep himself from asking the million questions running through his brain.

“As I was saying. I think it will be difficult, but it would be possible for you to do a sort of joint degree. That is to say a policy degree that focuses on magical creatures. Would you be amenable to that?”

It spoke to something deep within him that Harry’s immediate response was to say yes.

On the other hand, this was a major life decision. One he definitely needed to think about. And send an owl to his mum about. Maybe even Gemma.

Though, his sister he supposed he could call on his mobile. She had one too, and she even knew how to use it. His mum hadn’t quite gotten there yet, but apparently she was learning.

His advisor was waiting patiently for his answer.

“I would like to think about it, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. It’s a big change, and I would expect that takes some thinking over. Unfortunately, if you wait until after the holidays it might be too late to adjust your schedule for next year, but the offices don’t close until the twentieth of December so you have some time.”

Harry thanked her, took all of the pamphlets and course listings for the policy degree and left her office in a whirlwind.

He needed a drink.

 

_Why was the pub bar top always sticky?_

Harry’s face crumpled in disgust as he dragged the pad of his finger across the broken wood grain for what had to be the thirtieth time in the last ten minutes.

_It’s not a pub it’s a bar. There’s a difference._

_Alright, Mr. Smartypants._

Harry crossed his arms over the sticky surface and turned his head to rest it in one of his elbows as he giggled at his own subconscious insulting itself.

He should not have let Xavier make him margaritas.

Mmm… margarita. A glorious muggle invention. Maybe he should have another.

He lifted his head quickly to see if Xavier was nearby to make him another margarita, but he underestimated how much the room was going to shift around him.

“Woah,” he breathed as he gripped the edge of the bar tightly.

“You alright there, Harry?”

Where was Louis’ voice coming from?

Louis’ disembodied voice chuckled lowly. “I’m right here, love.”

Harry turned his head, again, much too quickly. “Louis?” There was a floaty face and vague body on the stool next to him.

“Hi,” Louis said with a bit of a mocking tone, which Harry did not appreciate, thanks. “Sorry, love, I’ll stop teasing. You’re really three sheets to the wind, huh?”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Harry insisted as the thin cotton of his skinny jeans started to slide on the polished seat of the stool.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Louis cried out as he gripped Harry’s waist. “Watch out or you’ll fall right to the floor.”

The floor. Oooh, the floor looked nice and flat. “I should lie down.”

Louis’ grip tightened as he landed swiftly on his feet, using his whole body to prop up Harry’s much ganglier one.

Warm. Louis was warm. The floor was probably cold. “You should lie down with me.”

“Maybe buy my dinner first,” Louis said with a strained voice.

“Are you hurt?” Harry asked, concerned that Louis had fallen or something. If he was hurt, he wouldn’t be able to warm Harry on the floor. They should lie down.

Harry flopped his body forward to try and get to the floor faster.

“Nope, not hurt. Just trying to keep you and your drunk Bambi legs upright.”

Well, that was nice of him.

“Aww, thanks Lou.” Harry reached stood up straight again. Louis’ warm body was pressed close to his which was _so_ comfortable, and it meant Harry’s eye line was right at Louis’ soft fringe. Sometimes, he combed it up and away from his face, but it never looked crunchy with gel. Those were Harry’s favorite days.

Why did it never look crunchy?

Harry reached a hand up to play with the way Louis’ fringe draped across his forehead. “So soft.”

Louis giggled. “Alright there?”

Harry nodded but the room swam so he stopped. “Thanks, Lou. Have you gotten a drink? I should get you a drink.” He turned towards the bar again, trying to lean across it to find Xavier.

“Where’s Xavier? I want to get Lou a drink.”

“I’m okay, love. We should really get you back upstairs.”

Louis had called him ‘love’ three times.

“That’s—It’s not that weird,” Louis stuttered. He was extra cute when he was flustered.

Harry reached up to pat his cheek. “Not weird at all, I like it.”

“Noted.” Louis laughed again as he turned Harry’s body around and led him to the indoor exit that opened up to the dormitory lobby.

They were almost to the lifts when Harry tried to turn around again. “Wait, I didn’t say goodbye to Xavier.”

“He’s lucky we didn’t stick around,” Louis grumbled.

“Why?” Harry whined. “He gave me drinks, not saying goodbye is impolite.”

“Getting you drunk for free and taking advantage of you is impolite.”

Who did that?

“No one, love. Nevermind,” Louis used his free hand to hit the button for the lift and paused for a moment. “What do you see in that Xavier guy anyway?”

“He’s my friend. He doesn’t confuse me.” The lift door opened and Harry started walking towards it.

Louis’ warm body that was pressed up next to his stopped moving though, so Harry stumbled forward.

“Sorry, sorry,” Louis said quickly. “Who does confuse you?”

“You,” Harry said. _Duh._ Louis should know that by now.

The lift pinged for the fifth floor and they stepped off in silence.

“I don’t mean to,” Louis said as he held his hand out for Harry’s keys. Harry reached down, and it took him a minute, but he managed to get the ring untangled from his pocket and handed them over. “Come on, love, let’s get you in bed.”

“Oh,” Harry snickered at how forward Louis was being. _Bed._ That was a big step. Harry would have settled for some kissing.

“Get your mind out of the gutter, thanks.” Louis held onto his shoulders and pushed him back until the room was spinning and Harry had landed on something soft.

Louis didn’t want to kiss him. Harry pouted. “Well, if you would stop being so hot, that would really help, _thanks._ ”

“Uhhh…” Louis had that dumbfounded look on his face again. Did Harry say something he shouldn’t have? “I’m just—I’m.” Instead of finishing his sentence, Louis walked away. Harry tried to follow his movements but it just made everything spin again. He heard the faucet turn on and off and then suddenly Louis was back.

He placed a glass of water on the bedside table.

“You should drink this.”

“Okay…” Harry’s eyelids were starting to feel heavy. He gripped the corner of his coverlet and started to drag it over his body.

There was movement near his feet and something tickled, but then all of a sudden his toes were cold. “Heeeey,” he whined again.

“Sleep tight, love,” Louis said softly before Harry’s world faded to black.

 

Three days later it was time to make a decision about his program, and Harry definitely needed to transfer. Or die. Dying was fine too.

After he had recovered from his hangover the other day, little bits and pieces of memories started coming to him. He had invited Louis to lie down on the floor of the bar with him. _He asked him to stop being hot._

Even if he ignored the Louis part of it, _Hermione Granger_ knew who he was. Knew he had been absolute shit in his first semester of post-graduate study.

Gemma had called him dramatic when he pointed that out. He didn’t think Gemma was being dramatic enough.

“You didn’t fail, Harry, it just wasn’t the right fit.”

Harry kept repeating that to himself over and over again as he stared at the letter he had written to apply for a transfer into the policy program. As it was at Hogwarts, the owlery was at the very top of the building on the roof of the dormitory.

He could see the administrative owlery from there, on top of a building a few blocks down still within the Merlin College grounds.

Taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly, Harry opened the cage of the smallest tawny owl at the end of the row. She was very sweet to Harry and liked to come downstairs with him and perch on his forearm to wait while he wrote his letters to his mum.

He gave her the letter address to Dr. Granger and she ruffled her feathers for a moment in the open air before zipping away to the building a few doors down.

That was it.

He wasn’t leaving school. He was only transferring programs. He was just going to have to live with the embarrassment of seeing Louis again after his display the other night.

Harry watched the owl float over the rooftops until she was out of sight. He shivered from a sudden burst of wind and finally let himself go back inside.

Everyone in the dormitories was packing up to go home for the holidays. People were leaving left and right. Harry knew that at least Niall’s train to London was later that day.

Harry hadn’t really talked to Niall about his program woes because he hadn’t wanted to bother him during his own end of semester stuff. There was a possibility he was still in the building now though, so instead of stopping at the fifth floor, he kept going down the stairs to the third floor in hopes of catching him.

When he knocked on Niall’s door, it swung open.

“Ni? You there?”

There was a crash from inside the closet.

“Hazza?” Niall popped out from behind the door holding an empty hanger. “Oh, thank God you’re here.”

“What?” Had Niall asked for him to be there?

“Can you do me a favor?” He disappeared back into the closet.

Harry was still very confused and Niall’s voice kept getting muffled by whatever he was doing.

“Sure?”

“There’s a footie bag on the back of the chair.” Harry looked around until he located a nondescript black duffel hooked over Niall’s desk chair.

“Yeah I see it.” He reached out to grab the strap and lift it.

“Perfect. Can you take it to Louis at some point today? I was supposed to earlier but didn’t get the chance.”

Harry blanched and his grip loosened while the bag fell to the ground in slow motion.

“Niall, I can’t.”

“Why not?” Niall popped his head out of the closet again but this time his body followed with a packed and sealed bag of his own.

“I told you about the part where I made a complete and total fool of myself the other day, right?”

Niall waved away his concerns. “Don’t be ridiculous. Lou probably thought it was funny. He brought you upstairs, didn’t he?”

“Right, but I—”

All of a sudden Harry was gripping the bag again and Niall was shooing him back out into the hallway. “I’ve got to go, let’s go,” he rushed.

When they were clear of the doorway, Niall locked his room before crushing Harry in a hug. Despite the chaos of the last five minutes, Harry wasn’t going to see Niall for the next few weeks so he squeezed him around the middle and buried his face in the crook of his neck.

Long holidays like this were always tough.

“Happy Christmas, Harry,” Niall said with his own squeeze.

They released each other and Niall took off for the stairs. “Bring that to Louis! Love ya!” he called over his shoulder.

The heavy stairwell door slammed behind him and Harry stood there holding Louis’ footie bag in the bleak holiday exodus induced silence of the third floor.

“Alright, then.”

Louis’ room was on the other side of the building and two floors up, so Harry turned around to head for the other stairwell.

This could be very simple. Harry could knock on the door and find that Louis had already gone home for the holidays.

But then, Harry would need to keep the bag in his room until after the holidays and give it to Louis when they came back for the next semester.

Maybe, if Harry knocked and Louis wasn't there but the door was open, Harry could just drop it off. No interaction—that was even better.

Or if Louis was there, Harry could just throw the bag at him and leave.

He climbed the last few steps and entered the fifth floor, not far away from his own room. The throwing and leaving plan wasn’t very viable, then, because his escape wouldn’t get him far.

When he finally knocked on Louis’ door after taking a few steadying breaths, it swung open the same way Niall’s had earlier.

“Hello?” Harry called out. He hadn’t heard any signs of anyone being in the hall bathroom, so Louis probably wasn’t in there. Did Louis just leave his room unlocked?

 _That didn’t matter right now,_ Harry reminded himself. It also didn’t matter that he was in Louis’ room for the first time. There were a few footie posters, and his desk was piled high with books. A cauldron sat over in the corner crusted with the remnants of some sort of potion. Probably something for one of Louis’ finals. The whole room was a mix of clothes and crumpled pieces of parchment.

It was kind of cute.

Harry let his head fall back and groaned. A messy room couldn’t be cute.

Footie bag. He needed to drop the footie bag and go.

Even as he was putting it on the bed, Harry couldn't help but think about how he knew nothing about footie which meant he knew nothing about what was in the bag he was carrying. Sure, he knew Quidditch players wore robes, so he knew what a kit _was_ and the bag probably just had Louis' in it.

Harry played with the zipper as he stood facing the end of Louis’ bed. His curiosity and his desire to see what was in the bag started growing.

It was probably a dirty, sweaty, smelly football kit. Gross.

But it was _Louis’_ dirty, sweaty, smelly football kit.

Harry huffed out a breath at his own ridiculous mind and ripped open the zipper to see what was inside.

A football kit.

The fabric was a bright, vibrant blue with little white decals on it. Harry had never seen anything like it before. The way the fabric moved in the light made it look like silk. He reached out to lift it. When he bunched it up in his hands it felt kind of like silk, he supposed, but there was something different about it.

All of a sudden the pads of his fingers hit a new texture. He turned the shirt over in his hands to see there was a very large number emblazoned on the back. When he glanced up at the wall, the players there had numbers too. Harry had seen that before in pictures Niall had showed him, but he hadn’t really thought about it.

Harry pulled the kit fully out of the duffel bag and let it hang down. He pinched it between his fingers at the shoulders and held it up against his chest trying to understand how the fabric would feel against his skin.

Muggles had the weirdest things sometimes.

***

“He called you confusing?” Liam asked as his brow furrowed and he concentrated on a spot in front of them. He pointed his wand around the corner and muttered a curse. There was a loud yelp, and then a thump a few seconds later.

They listened for a few more moments before Louis—the lookout—inched around the same corner to make sure it was clear. “‘Confusing,’ yeah.”

The two of them were in their last final of the semester. It was a practical, and their professors had set up a maze of sorts for them to work their way out of, curse by curse.

“Well,” Liam paused to clear away a mess left behind by one of the other students. “How do you feel about him?”

“What? What do you mean, Liam?” Louis pointed his wand and unlocked the next door, testing the handle and pushing it open carefully.

The room was clear. _So_ clear, that it was suspicious. And, Louis noticed almost immediately, it had no other exit. They both split up and began tapping on bricks to try and find a door.

“It’s a valid question. How do you feel about him?”

Louis scoffed. “I can’t get involved with someone, you know that.”

The noises from the other side of the room stopped. “Do I? What’s the problem with being involved with someone? I have Zayn,” he pointed out.

“Sure, but Zayn doesn’t live in your dormitory. What if things didn’t work out?” Liam made a small sound of protest. “I meant with me and Harry, calm down.”

“It might be awkward, sure. But you’re both adults. There’s no reason to count something out just because it _might_ go wrong.”

Liam was right. Louis hated when Liam was right.

“Ugh,” he said, for lack of a better answer.

The grout around the brick at Louis’ eye level was slightly disturbed, so he pressed his fingertips against it and a door opened on the other side of the room, surprising Liam and making him stumble.

“Found it.”

They finished their practical with relative ease—it was Louis’ favorite class, after all, and then they headed back up to the dorm. Liam was on his way to Edinburgh the next morning to see Zayn for a few days before they had to go home for Christmas.

When they reached the fifth floor, winded after their practical and the climb that Liam always insisted on making even though there was a perfectly good lift, Liam split off towards his own room and Louis pulled his keys out of his pocket. Though he was terrible about remembering to lock his door, so he probably didn’t even need to get them out.

As he expected, when he flattened his hand against the polished wood of his door and pushed, it swung open freely. Score.

He entered, letting it swing back behind him before he froze in his steps.

“Harry?”

Harry Styles was standing in his bedroom, bathed in the beautiful filtered light of the afternoon sun, holding Louis’ footie jersey up to his chest and admiring himself.

Being the older brother of six siblings and having lived for a number of years in an all male dormitory, it wasn’t quite the weirdest thing Louis had ever come home to, but it was up there on the list.

At the sound of Louis’ voice, Harry jumped about a foot in the air and reflexively let the jersey fall to the ground in a pile at his feet.

His cheeks were flushed like they were the other night, but this time his eyes were wide and alert instead of glassy and heavy-lidded like they had been.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asked.

“What am I doing here?” Louis repeated slowly. “It’s my room?”

Harry looked around like he had only just realized that. “Right.”

Louis took a few more steps forward. Harry made no move to leave.

“Niall!” he blurt out.

That brought Louis up short. “Niall?”

“Niall. Asked me to bring this to you.”

Louis’ forgotten football bag lay open on his bed. “Oh. And you opened it?”

“It was already open,” Harry said haltingly as his gaze shifted. _Lie._ That was a lie. Louis was an Auror. Well, in training, but he still had amazing instincts and could tell when a mark was lying to him.

Suddenly, Louis couldn’t help it. Couldn’t resist Harry anymore. He was emboldened by Harry’s clear curiosity about his stuff.

“Mmhmm. Open.” He took another step forward until he could feel the warmth emanating from Harry.

Louis watched him silently, they both stared at each other, just until the point that Harry began to lean forward into Louis' space. That was when Louis bent down to pick his football jersey up off the floor.

“And this?” he asked holding the flimsy material up between them.

“Muggle fabric,” Harry whispered under his breath.

Normally a phrase like that might make Louis’ hackles raise as a dig to his muggle-born status. But with Harry and the way he eyed the fabric with an open fascination, he could just tell that it was actual curiosity.

Louis couldn’t stand it any more. He dropped the fabric again and covered the last bit of distance between them, cupping the back of Harry’s neck in one fluid movement. He stopped inches away from Harry’s lips.

Harry closed the distance between them with a lurch.

Their teeth clashed behind their lips with the force of his enthusiasm, but he brought his hands up to brace himself on Louis’ shoulders, and they settled into the kiss.

Louis eased back a bit, loathe to leave behind the taste of Harry’s mouth, but he was panting and overwhelmed and tired and sweaty, and Harry was there. In his room. And they were kissing.

They locked eyes briefly before Harry’s gaze flicked down to look at Louis’ lips again. Careful this time, Louis leaned in and kissed him again.

Just as their lips were about to connect, Harry let out a soft little sigh. The sound unlocked something in Louis—his urgency.

“God, Harry,” he moaned, breaking the silence as Harry teased along his jaw and latched onto the sensitive bit of skin on his neck under his ear. Louis had ignored his desire to taste Harry for too long to let Harry do so freely.

Louis led their lips back together as he spun them around until he crowded Harry up against the wall next to his desk on top of a poster of David Beckham in his United kit. Harry let himself sag against the wall until he was down a little closer to Louis’ height, and canted his hips while reaching out to grab the undershirt Louis had been wearing under his training robes.

His grip tightened in the light cotton reflexively the way it had around Louis’ kit and he pulled him closer until they were pressed together from chest to thigh.

Harry moaned again into Louis’ mouth at the friction, but all Louis could concentrate on was the soft, inviting skin of his neck. While he leaned in to have a taste, he let his hands wander. They migrated up from Harry’s hips under the hem of his silky blouse.

If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with Harry’s body, he would have been endeared at Harry’s very clear obsession with silky fabrics including now the football kit style blend of nylon and polyester.

“Yeah,” Harry breathed out, and Louis realized he was giving him permission to take his shirt off. He complied quickly reaching up to undo the only three buttons Harry had done on his blouse, letting the fabric fall away from itself until it was just barely hanging on to Harry’s shoulders. Louis pushed it off the last little bit and let it fall to the floor to join the jersey.

Louis immediately brought his hands back up to hold his hips, the skin there softer than he had ever imagined.

“Are we doing this?” he asked Harry, in an attempt to hold on to his sanity.

“Please.”

The skin to skin contact on the wall was nice, but what Louis really wanted was to spread Harry out.

He took Harry’s hand and led him back to the end of the bed, letting him lay down carefully. Louis climbed up to straddle his legs, leaning down to press his lips just under Harry’s collar bone.

“You’re so gorgeous,” Louis couldn’t help but whisper reverently as he dotted kisses farther and farther down Harry’s chest.

Harry squirmed under the attention, trying to move his hips searching for friction.

Too late, Louis registered the noise in the hallway as being right in front of his door.

“Hey, Louis—” Liam’s voice edged around the side of the door. Harry sat up quickly, but Louis managed to press a hand to his chest and keep them from bumping foreheads.

Louis scrambled to pull his wand out of the deep pocket of his shorts and bit out _“Fumos,”_ before he could even think, filling the room with a gray smokescreen. He hadn’t thought to control it at all so it was thicker and denser than he might usually use in a duel.

“What the fuck, Lou?”

Louis was going to get in so much trouble for using defensive magic in the dormitories.

“Sorry, Li,” Louis called out as he rolled off of Harry and he jumped up to look for his shirt. There was no way he would be able to find it in this mess.

“I can’t see anything,” Liam called out from near the door.

Harry coughed discreetly.

“Louis? Is that you?”

They were close enough that Louis could still see Harry’s wide eyes despite the dense fog.

“Um,” Louis coughed exaggeratedly. “Yeah… Let me clear this up and then I’ll come and find you before I leave.”

“Okay,” Liam replied and there was slight wave in the clouds of smoke and a click as he shut the door behind him.

Louis mumbled a spell to clear the air, but he was distracted so it only cleared a little pocket around them.

“I’m so sorry,” he said lamely as he tried to get his heart rate back under control. Harry just bit his lip and looked around for his blouse. The mood had officially been killed.

“That’s okay,” he said as he finally located it on the floor. “Do you—You said you were going home?”

Slowly but surely Harry put his silk blouse back on and did up a few buttons. Covering his delicious expanse of skin should be a crime.

“Oh, yeah, the train to my nan’s house in Doncaster is at six.”

“Ah,” Harry replied. Now that he wasn’t concentrating on putting his blouse back on, they didn’t have anything else to occupy themselves. “I should… um... go, then.”

“Right.” Louis was twenty-three years old, he should be able to hold a conversation by now. “This was fun.”

Harry finally met his eye again, and the smile that spread was worth the little bit of awkwardness. “Yeah. Fun.”

The smoke had cleared enough that Harry could safely make it to the door, and he paused with his hand on the frame and looked back at Louis.

“Happy Christmas, Louis.”

He was gone before Louis could return the sentiment.

* * *

Harry had been in his new policy classes for a week now, and he was loving them. He had to catch up on a lot of practical knowledge that he had only really learned as peripheral knowledge in his history studies, but he was having a great time doing it.

In his policy classes he really felt like he could make a difference instead of just focusing on what wizards of the past had done in the handling and treatment of magical creatures.

There was certainly a lot more that he had to learn about the Ministry than he had ever expected he would. To him it had always been somewhat removed. Now that everything had settled down politically after the Second Wizarding War, there wasn’t much divisive policy coming out of the Ministry which meant that people could ignore it and let it run on its own. Wizards loved ignoring things if they could.

Basic Ministry function and the structure of the all the departments was the most confusing part to Harry.

At least it was clearer than the mixed signals he was getting from Louis, Harry thought wryly as he packed up his back after class.

Though he supposed no signals or contact of any kind couldn’t really be considered ‘mixed’ signals. They were pretty clear.

“Harry! Hey,” the man in question panted in the bitter cold of the January morning as he caught up to Harry on the path.

“Louis?” Harry might have discovered a new sort of magic where thinking about someone made them appear out of nowhere.

“Yeah. Hi. How were your holidays?” Louis asked as though this was something they did regularly and there hadn’t been three—almost four—weeks of radio silence between them after they made out on the last day of finals.

“Good?” he replied warily.

Louis smiled widely at him, breath still puffing out in white clouds in the chill of the morning air. “Great! Well, I’ve got to go to class. See you around.”

Just as quickly as he arrived, he disappeared and Harry was standing alone on the path again.

That was odd. It sort of seemed like Louis wanted to be friends. Casual friends. Like all of their other friends were.

Harry wasn’t sure friends was the message he wanted to associate with someone he wanted to sleep with so badly.

 

Three weeks later, Harry was beginning to grow concerned. He and Louis had three weeks of plain, friendly interactions under their belts but they had still not talked about the fact that they made out all over Louis’ room right before break.

Louis hadn’t brought it up yet. And Harry didn’t want to bring it up if Louis didn’t want to bring it up, so he wasn’t bringing it up.

It was possible Harry was even more confused than he had been at the beginning of the school year. They were probably better friends now than they had ever been, but Harry still desperately wanted to sleep with him. If something didn’t change soon, he was going to do something about it.

In the meantime, he had so much coursework he barely had time to do anything. Maybe that was why he and Louis had so many unresolved issues. If post-graduate study gave them even an hour of free time they would have already been able to hash it all out and live happily ever after.

Or something.

Instead, the school was creating more work for them. The Minister of Magic—some protégé of Kingsley Shacklebolt—was coming to the school to speak to any department with students that intended to filter directly into the Ministry when they graduated.

That meant a joint lecture with the policy students as well as the magical law students, and the up and coming Auror recruits. Which meant a joint lecture with Louis and Liam. That part would be fun, at least.

Harry surveyed the seats in the auditorium. There were no little tables on the seats because the room wasn’t usually used for teaching, but Harry supposed he would have to make do with his notebook.

He finally spotted Liam and Louis with an empty seat next to them. They greeted him warmly as he sat down, but continued to go on and on about some kid that got cursed in one of their duel exercises.

The Minister of Magic arrived and gave his canned speech that did little to inspire or deter any of the students in the room who had already gotten far enough into their education to know what they were getting into with the Ministry.

When he was done, though, one of Harry’s public policy professors got up to address the room as a whole.

“The Ministry is determined more than ever to foster relationships between different departments. As you all know, many in this room will be your coworkers in just a few years’ time—if you should be so lucky—so why not get a head start?”

Murmurs began to break out amongst the students and Harry got that weird squirmy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“You will be pairing up with a person of another degree program for a joint essay on the topic of your choosing—relevant to today’s discussion of fostering relationships between Ministry departments,” she warned as her pointed finger grazed over the whole crowd.

The murmurs intensified.

“Pair up. Remember, your partner cannot be from your own degree program.”

Louis and Harry turned to each other with an alarming degree of synchronicity.

Louis raised his eyebrow at Harry. “Do you want to?” he asked gesturing between them.

No. No he definitely didn’t. This would just make everything that much weirder. What did Harry need to do around here to get in Louis’ pants without complication?

“Sure.”

Liam peered at him over Louis’ shoulder. “Aw, man. I knew we shouldn’t have saved the seat for Harry. Now I’m going to have to find someone else.”

Normally, Harry would have been fake-affronted at Liam’s implication, but today all he could concentrate on was the calculated way Louis was watching him.

After their lecture, they decided to meet in the library the next day to get started. Harry had suggested his room at first, hoping they could finally have a private setting to discuss the fact that they had kissed, but Louis had blanched and suggested the library instead.

Louis didn’t want to be alone with him, that much was clear. Harry should probably let himself give up the idea of things ever working out between them, but there was still a kernel of hope in his chest.

 

The musty smell of the library got in Harry’s nose and he fought the urge to sneeze as he psyched himself up.

Louis said he would be on the third floor in the back when they had passed each other earlier, so Harry went looking for him there. When he finally found him, his heart stopped for a moment.

He was gorgeous, trapped in a beam of sunlight that was streaming down from one of the old gothic windows. Dust floated around Louis in a halo as he bent over his roll of parchment.

Harry needed to talk to him. They needed to decide what this was between them once and for all. If Louis didn’t want to get involved, Harry could respect that. It would be terrible and he would officially be alone for the rest of his life, but he would respect what Louis wanted.

Closing the distance between them, Harry put his bag down next to Louis. “Hey.”

Louis jumped a little bit. “Hey, Harry.” He paused to let Harry get settled in his chair. “I’ve started brainstorming some topics we could talk about.”

So they were going straight into it then.

“That’s great,” Harry replied trailing off, letting the phrase hang unfinished.

“But?” Louis prompted.

“I was really hoping we could talk about at the end of last semester.” Harry was quite proud of himself for getting everything out in one go. Confrontation was usually something he avoided, but if this would get him a definitive answer about how Louis felt about him, he just needed to say it.

Louis glanced down at the desk in front of him. “Right.” Harry watched as he placed his hands flat and set his shoulders determinedly. “Look, you and I both want to do well on this project. And that day was really fun. Maybe we should… put it on hold? Until we’re done? We can both be professional about this.”

 _Put it on hold?_ He was pretty sure that meant Louis did still want to be with him at some point.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed weakly, not knowing what else to say.

Louis’ face brightened. “Cool,” he said as he reached for the parchment where he had written down a few topics. “This is what I was thinking.”

He started listing off the topics he had written down and his reasoning behind each one, but Harry was still feeling a little off-kilter.

While they discussed their essay, Harry vacillated between excitement about Louis being into him, and anger at the fact that Louis was just expecting him to wait around until they were done with their project.

This was the opposite of a definitive answer, and there was no end in sight to the confusion Louis Tomlinson would cause him.

They landed on an essay exploring the black market trade of magical creatures and Harry searched the catalog of the library for what they needed. Their seats weren’t far away from the general section, so they left their things and followed the signs on the stacks until they were surrounded by books on rare and banned magical creatures.

It wasn’t a section that was often visited, if the dust was anything to go by, and it was a bit dark but Harry lit the tip of his wand to help them search.

They were both crowded in close to try and read the illegible titles on the spines of all the books and Louis had leaned over far enough that he was pressed into Harry’s side.

Harry could smell him. His natural, comforting smell cut through the musty old books around them and washed over Harry, flooding his mind with memories from that one afternoon.

This was not helping. He needed to pull away. Away from Louis’ warmth. They needed to put some distance between them before Harry gave into his instinct to cuddle up into Louis’ body and never let go.

Just as he had worked up the strength to pull away, Louis started talking about what they were seeing, commenting on which ones they should or shouldn't bother taking with them.

And his hand started rubbing little circles on Harry’s back.

Harry turned his body towards him intent on telling him off for the mixed signals he was sending, but he didn’t get the chance.

Before he could say anything, Louis had him pressed up against the bookshelves and they were kissing again.

Louis’ penchant for getting Harry up against a wall to snog him senseless was _very_ promising. Harry brought his arms up to rest on Louis’ shoulders, tangling his hands into the downy hair at the nape of his neck.

“Mmph,” Harry moaned as Louis nipped at his bottom lip. This was definitely more like it. Harry drew him in even closer and had just gotten comfortable, when Louis pulled back panting, catching his breath.

They needed some privacy. _“Nox,”_ Harry muttered.

“Wait, Harry,” Louis breathed out as soon as they were bathed in shadow.

“No,” Harry groaned. “You are not doing this again.”

Louis stiffened in his grip, but didn’t pull away. “Again? I didn’t do it the first time.”

They were still standing close enough that Harry could feel his damp breath. They should be kissing.

“Yes, you did. We came back from holiday and you ignored me.”

“I didn’t ignore you,” Louis protested.

Harry bumped their noses together and loosened his grip to soften the edge of the conversation. “You refused to talk about the fact that we kissed.”

Then, the most amazing thing happened. Louis blushed and let his gaze fall between their bodies, bringing his hand up to play with one of Harry’s buttons. The same way he had that day. Like he was remembering. “I was worried you regretted it and didn’t want to talk about it.”

Harry went to slap him lightly on his chest but got distracted by his muggle tattoo peeking out around the collar of his t-shirt, pausing to trace it until it disappeared out of view under the thin cotton. “No, you idiot.”

“You’re a distraction.” The implication stung, and Harry went to move away, but Louis held fast. “Wait, that came out wrong. I thought staying away from you meant that I wouldn’t get distracted. Turns out you’re equally distracting either way,” he added pressing a chaste kiss to Harry’s cheek.

“Are you going to ask me out on a date, now?” Harry asked with a saccharine sweetness.

Louis threw his head back. “I mean, if I have to,” he teased before leaning in and kissing him again.

They lost themselves in the kiss for a little while. Then a little while turned into a long while, until Harry’s back was sore and his lips were numb and he was more than a little hot and bothered. There was no telling how long they had been away from their table.

When Louis pulled away from him again, Harry couldn’t help but giggle. He looked like he had been mauled by a wild animal with swollen lips and his hair sticking out in a million different angles. Harry loved the texture of it.

“We should go back and sit down,” he said punctuating every couple of words with a kiss.

Louis took his hand and they made their way back toward the table together, fingers tangled between them.

It wasn’t until they both sat back down, still wrapped up in each other, that they realized they hadn’t actually retrieved any books.

Laughter bubbled up in Harry’s throat as he hooked his arm through Louis’ and put his head on his shoulder. In response, Louis pressed his cheek against Harry’s hair placing a kiss near his forehead.

“Do you remember a little while ago when you said we should _‘put this on hold’_?” Harry asked.

“Mmhmm.”

Harry let his hand drop to Louis’ thigh and shifted as close as he could. “How did that go?”

Louis bit back a smile and schooled his features. “Really well, thanks, Harold, I think I have very good handle on the situation.”

“Good. Maybe _—_ just in case _—_ I should go back alone.”

Louis broke character and laughed. “That’s probably a good idea.”

Harry squeezed his thigh once more before standing up to walk away. With Louis not in view any more, Harry took a deep breath and let his heart lift in his chest.

New program, new boy. Things were looking up.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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